Plans for intersession

Good Tuesday afternoon, friends. How's your week going?

Mine is going sloooooow. I have next week off (it's our fall break/intersession) and the days are starting to drag just as they always do when time off is on the horizon.

I have a few plans for the week, but nothing major. I certainly can't afford to go anywhere right now (worse luck!) but I'm going to try to enjoy myself in small ways. My plans are:

• Write several blog posts that have been rattling around in my head lately, one of which will be short book reviews of stuff I've read recently.
• Attempt to make pomegranate jelly! Yes, my pomegranate tree is loaded with ripe fruit for the first time this year, and I don't want it to go to waste. I've counted 15 large poms on the tree ready to be picked, so I should have enough for a few jars. The recipe looks simple enough...we shall see.
• After a years' (multiple) long hiatus, I'm going to pick up my knitting needles again and work on a project. The lovely young couple across the street are having a baby girl next month, and I'd like to knit a blanket for her. They're planning to name her Georgia. Isn't that pretty? It will be an exceedingly simple blanket, knit on large needles, since I'm so out of practice, but I think it will be a good project to begin again with. 
• Invite Martina over with her dog, Harker, for a playdate with Poppy one afternoon. Those two dogs are close in age and love each other! They both still have lots of "puppy" in them.
• Gregg wants to put a second coat of paint on the bathroom walls. I really don't feel like doing any more painting, but he's not going to be satified until we have a second coat on there. 

I'm sure there will also be plenty of reading, watching tv shows I don't normally have time for, etc. Also plenty of walks with the dogs. The weather is finally cooler and better for exercise, although my allergies are bad (the way they always are this time of year)  and I haven't been outdoors as much as I'd like lately. We'll see how that goes. I've been resolving to get more exercise. Maybe I'll even get my bike road-worthy again and ride it some. 

I'm grateful to have made it to fall intersession with my new job. I kept telling myself last spring (when I first found out I'd landed the job) that by October I should be fairly comfortable with everything. And it's true! I've learned a lot, and it's such a good environment that I haven't had a single bit of work stress since starting there. None. Zero. What a wonderful change from last year! 

What would you do with a week off at home?

First day of fall break

I woke up at 6:45am this morning with pink light streaming in my bedroom window. The sky looked so pretty that I immediately got out of bed and snapped a photo from the front porch.

It's good to be on fall break, finally. Thanksgiving falls really late this year. Once we go back to school on Monday there's just three weeks left until Christmas break will be upon us.

Today has been nice. I drank several cups of coffee on the porch first thing and watched the progress next door. The house beside us that's been for sale for some months now has finally been sold and the new owners are moving in. I saw a (probably) young woman out back with two dogs on leashes, but I haven't been able to get a real sense of what these new neighbors are like yet. I went out to do some shopping today and picked up a box of assorted cookies from one of the local bakeries, and Gregg brought home a package of dog treats from the pet store. I plan to take them over tomorrow as a little "welcome to the neighborhood" gift. I do hope they're decent people; we're doing what we can to get off on the right foot with them. The jerk behind us is plenty as far as bad neighbors go! Wish us luck.

While I was out today I stopped at a garden center/gift shop to have a look at their year-round Christmas items for sale. Nothing I saw inside was of much interest to me but I enjoyed walking around the outside and looking at the plants for sale.

We still have a lot of color left in the trees around here, as you can see.

Oh! And Gregg's birthday picture is framed and hanging on our wall. I picked it up last night on my way home from work:

Tonight he's working late like he usually does on Wednesdays, but once he gets home it will offically be a holiday! I'm having wine while beginning to prep some of the food for tomorrow's meal. We'll be having roast turkey, gravy, cornbread dressing, cranberry mandarin orange walnut salad (the recipe I invented years ago), deviled eggs (I cheated and bought the pre-boiled eggs for convenience sake!) and canned corn and green beans. For dessert I'll be making some sort of apple dessert from scratch, most likely a crisp. Tonight I'll salt and season the turkey, make the cranberry salad, and bake a batch of cornbread for the dressing so that tomorrow our meal will be fairly easy to pull together. With a 16 pound bird we'll probably be eating turkey until Christmas....I'll have to be creative with leftovers!

And tonight makes 12 years that we've had our sweet girl, our Gingerbread. She showed up on our back porch the night before Thanksgiving in 2007.

Puppy Ginger....Thanksgiving Day 2007.

 My sweet girl!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my blog friends here in the USA! I hope you all are surrounded by good food, good company, and lots of love tomorrow.